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Coin is the much-hyped (and very successful) crowdfunded project that aims to change everything about how you pay for things.

You might think of it as "one credit card to rule them all" — it digitally stores multiple credit numbers on one device, which you can swipe as though it were a standard card.

But there's still quite a ways to go before the miracle card becomes a casual, everyday, no-big-deal reality, reports The Verge. For now, the device only works at 85% of credit card terminals.

Coin was originally supposed to launch by the end of this year.

In the interest of field-testing and getting that up to a much more desirable 100% compatibility rate, the company today launched Coin Beta, offering 10,000 of its earliest backers the choice to "sacrifice" their final, retail edition of Coin to get a prototype ahead of time. They'll later have the option to buy the retail version at 70% off, and any other Coin products that beta testers buy over the next three years will be had at 50% off.

The takeaway is that Coin is close to working, and will be even closer upon launch of the company's app — August 28 for iOS, September 25 for Android. A special "reader" accessory that comes with Coin captures card data and saves it to your phone, and the app lets you select which cards you want to have access to on Coin.